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Kederal Council 
of the Churches of Christ 
in America 


‘Rev. Shailer Mathews, D.D., President 
Rev. Charles S. Macfarland, Gen. Sec. 


Be 


A Call to Prayer 


FOR A 


World-wide Revival 


i 


Issued by the 
Commission on Lvangelism 


Rev. Wm. H. Roberts, D.D., Chairman 

Rev. Bishop Joseph F. Berry, D.D., V.-Chairman 
Rey. W. E. Biederwolf, General Secretary 
Rev. Charles E. Schaeffer, D.D., Treasurer 


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POOL STOUT LT eT 


A Call Ue) Prayer 


FOR 


World- aan Revival 









Fe! »|HE Commission on Evangelism 
or a of the Federal Council of the 
ge) Churches of Christ in America, 
acting for the Federal Council, issues a 
solemn call to the Churches of Christ, 
to unite in prayer for a world-wide 
Revival of true Religion. The primal 
consideration that has inspired this call 
is the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ 
always stands ready with all the forces 
of omnipotence to aid His people, 
pleading and striving in His name and 
for His sake, for the salvation of that 
world for which He died, and which he 
lives to redeem. We have also the 
incentive contained in the Saviour’s 
prayer the night before his atoning 
death, ‘‘Neither pray I for these alone, 
but for them also which shall believe on 
me through their word; that they all 


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u wane 


may be one, that the world may believe 
that thou hast sent me.” Christian 
unity can find inspiring manifestation, 
not only in the United States, but in all 
lands, in united prayer for the salvation 
of the world. 

Another incentive to prayer for world 
revival is found in the fact that the 
Christian Church began its career of 
spiritual advance, with a revival of 
religion so great that the word Pentecost 
has been a marked note of encourage- 
ment to Christians through all the 
centuries. Pentecostal revivals have 
been God’s gift to the United States 
repeatedly. The ‘Great Awakening”’ 
of the Eighteenth Century, the Nation- 
wide revival of the opening years of the 
Nineteenth Century, the great spiritual 
quickening of the year 1857, and other 
evangelistic movements that could be 
mentioned, were followed invariably by 
great spiritual and moral uplifts through- 
out all our territory. To-day our 
country needs more and greater revivals, 
revivals more thorough and far reaching 
in their results in individual salvation 
than any of the past, and more complete 
and permanent, in the moral reformation 

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both of individuals and the nation. For 
the situation in our country is, from a 
spiritual viewpoint, at a critical stage. 
A majority of our male population is not 
in direct connection with any Christian 
Church, either Protestant or Catholic. 
Fully forty millions of our adults do not 
recognize Christian standards of conduct. 
In addition, many professing Christians 
have no active interest in the supreme 
work of the Church, the winning of 
souls for and to Jesus Christ. 

In Europe the situation is strenuous. 
There, professedly Christian nations are 
killing and wounding men by the mil- 
lions, and only a great revival of true 
religion can produce the inward change 
demanded, the effecting a mental revo- 
lution in the attitude of great nations 
towards war. And the masses of the 
warring peoples, as a result of the exist- 
ing conditions, it is to be noted, are 
impressed deeply with the value of 
spiritual realities, so that the church 
edifices are crowded with worshipers. 
What is true of Europe is true of 
other regions. God, as an overshadow- 
ing presence, is consciously felt in all the 
world. 


The needs of the hour are definite; 
the Church Universal reawakened to 
duty; the Christian conscience re- 
aroused, and a wide-spread revival of 
Christ’s redemptive Spirit in the hearts 
and lives of men. Reform measures, 
it is true, are accomplishing in some 
lands much good, but still the hosts and 
forces of sin advance in many places 
more rapidly than those of the Gospel. 
The great need is for a change of heart; 
for a return to the simple virtues of the 
pious life; for the honoring of God’s 
Word because of its absolute truth and 
great spiritual power; for a return of the 
recognition of God at the table and 
fireside; for a renewal of the honoring 
of God by attending His house, and 
above all for prompt and constant 
obedience to the command implied in 
the words of Christ, ‘‘I am come to seek 
and to save that which was lost.” 

This solemn call, is also the recogni- 
tion that the duty of regular daily 
prayer needs at times to be supplemented 
and intensified by extraordinary prayer. 
The need for concerted and extraor- 
dinary supplication was involved in 
the Saviour’s words to His Disciples, 

s 


“Depart not from Jerusalem, but wait 
for the promise of the Father.’’ And 
that prayerful waiting brought Pente- 
cost. Every great revival of religion 
has been preceded by waiting upon God. 
We plead, therefore, not only for special 
individual prayer for revival, but we 
plead for the whole Church in prayer, 
in the spirit of the Apostle Paul, who 
exhorts all Christians, not Timothy 
only, ‘‘that supplications, prayers, inter- 
cessions, and giving of thanks, be made 
for all men, for kings, and for all that are 
in authority; that we may lead a quiet 
and peaceable life in all godliness and 
honesty. For this is good and accep- 
table in the sight of God our Saviour; 
who will have all men to be saved, and 
to come unto the knowledge of the 
truth.”” The one continuous petition 
in intercession, however, should be for 
that blessing divinely promised, ‘‘it 
shall come to pass in the last days, saith 
God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon 
all flesh, and your sons and your daugh- 
ters shall prophesy, and your young 
men shall see visions, and your old 
men shall dream dreams, and on my 
servants and on my handmaidens I will 
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pour out in those days of my Spirit.’ 
“And it shall come to pass, that who- 
soever shall call on the name of the 
Lord, shall be saved.” 

Let prayer then be made for all men, 
for all nations and their rulers, for all 
the Churches of Christ in this and every 
land, for all ministers and church 
officers, for all church members, for the 
masses of men and women who are in 
spiritual darkness, and especially for 
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 
every land in Pentecostal revelations of 
divine power unto salvation, so that 
Jesus Christ may be accepted as the 
divine Saviour by all the world, and the 
Gospel may be so applied by the Holy 
Spirit, that human nature everywhere 
shall be truly regenerated, and men 
dwell together here on earth as brethren 
in Christ, even as it is the assured hope 
of saved men so to dwell in the ever- 
lasting and heavenly Kingdom of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Breth- 
ren in Christ of every denominational 
and Church name, let us unite in prayer 
for a world-wide Pentecost, in His name 
and for the extension of His Kingdom, 
who died upon His cross “the propitia- 

7 


tion for our sins, and not for ours only, 
but also for the sins of the whole world.”’ 
Let us pray in the spirit and power of 
the words, “For God so loved the 
world, that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, 
should not perish, but have everlasting 
life.’’ 

In behalf of the Federal Council of 
the Churches of Christ in America. 


Wa. HENRY ROBERTs, 
Chairman Commission on Evangelism. 


WILLIAM E. BIEDERWOLF, 
Secretary of the Commission. 


SHAILER MATHEWS, 
President. 


CHARLES S. MACFARLAND, 
General Secretary. 


PHILADELPHIA, PA., 
MARCH 20, I9I5. 


